Modern Applications Support with Containers and DevOps

Power innovation with Dell’s modern apps infrastructure solutions that span the top Kubernetes distributions and automation tooling.
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At Dell, we’re committed to driving breakthrough innovation through modern application software approaches. There are three main areas where we are investing today to help our customers maximize the benefit of modern applications trends: Add Container Support, Accelerate your DevOps Practice and Create Multicloud Consistency.

Add Container Support

Microservices are the new way of architecting applications. Containers are how microservices are deployed. Containers need an orchestration platform and Kubernetes is the de facto standard Dell is committed to driving a strong ecosystem of partnerships with the major providers of Kubernetes, and we have solutions today for: Amazon EKS Anywhere, Google Anthos, Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service, Red Hat OpenShift, Suse Rancher and VMware Tanzu. These solutions include options for both bare-metal and virtualized deployments. We have created a level playing field so you can choose your preferred stack.

When it comes to establishing your on-premises environment for hosting those apps every organization may need a different approach. Some will want complete control of the underlying components which is where our PowerEdge server line, our purpose-built storage like PowerStore, PowerMax, PowerScale or ObjectScale,  and our container storage modules come into play. Some want a more turnkey pre-integrated environment with the benefits of automated full-stack lifecycle management and will use our HCI solutions like PowerFlex and VxRail. Some will want an as-a-Service approach so they can avoid the business of configuring infrastructure altogether and may even want a fully-managed solution and so will choose from our APEX portfolio of solutions.

Many organizations want to get away from forecasting three to five years out and making a large up-front capital outlay for IT resources – especially for new applications. Dell has many flexible financial options that help align payment with consumption. Usage-based pricing provides relief from paying for over-provisioned resources. On-demand scalability ensures that you have extra capacity available at a moment’s notice. Subscription terms allow you to pay-as-you-go for IT resources. These all add up to tremendous CapEx vs OpEx flexibility.

The bottom line is that Dell is your partner when it comes to adding container support to your operation today.

Accelerate Your DevOps Practice

New software architectures must be supported by new operational processes. Dell Technologies and our partners have proven expertise with specific services around Containers and Infrastructure-as-Code to help you establish a DevOps practice. Automation is a key tenet of DevOps. At Dell, we’ve created a standardized set of RESTful APIs that enable software control of our products. On top of those we have written specific integrations with common tooling frameworks such as Ansible, Terraform, ServiceNow and others. We post this software in online repositories like Github and Dockerhub and our own Developer portal.

DevOps teams must provide a production-ready environment that meets the service levels expected by customers, partners and employees. Dell Power Protect Data Manager is an enterprise-grade solution that was developed in collaboration with the Velero open-source community. It protects both virtualized and containerized applications as well as the infrastructure that runs them to provide business continuity and disaster recovery for modern applications. It works with our Cyber Vault and Cyber Recovery to address ransomware threats. When it comes to enabling DevOps in your organization, Dell has the expertise, integrations and tools that enable you to pragmatically evolve your approach starting today.

Graphic with details about Dell's ecoystem of Products and Services for Devops tooling and Containers and Kubernetes.

Create Multicloud Consistency

All of this takes place against the backdrop of today’s multicloud reality. Most organizations have both public cloud and private cloud resources as well as remote locations that need support. Consistency is the key to success in the multicloud world. It is important to avoid creating additional silos of operations. Dell delivers on this today with a set of capabilities that can be deployed consistently across private, public and edge locations. Our storage, protection and runtime offerings can be extended across locations to provide the best of both worlds including support for all the major public cloud providers. This helps drive efficiency, reduce complexity and enhance policy governance with consistent infrastructure and consistent operations across private, public and edge deployment options.

Practicing What We Preach

We have put this strategy in place to modernize our own operations, using the products and practices that we advocate for our customers for our own operations. We have seen tremendous success from our own modernization efforts within Dell IT. According to Jaynene Hapanowicz, Senior Vice President of Technology Transformation and Services Development for Dell Digital. “We have cracked the code for a world-class developer experience, freeing our developers to spend 70-75 percent of their time writing functional code.”

How to Get Started

The Dell Technologies portfolio of solutions for modern applications is comprehensive. Our open approach incorporates the best technologies and services across the cloud-native ecosystem. Dell Technologies is your trusted partner to support your transformation and adoption journey with flexible solutions that span modern architecture, agile processes and multicloud deployment for breakthrough applications. We will be at Kubecon 2022 in Detroit during the week of October 24th, 2022, so please stop by or check out our virtual booth at the event. For more information online, take a look at the Dell Developer portal, Dell’s Kubernetes solutions page and DevOps solutions page for more information.

About the Author: Varun Chhabra

Varun Chhabra is Senior Vice President of Infrastructure (ISG) and Telecom Marketing at Dell. He has been with Dell since 2015. Prior to joining Dell, Varun worked at Microsoft, where he held a variety of product marketing roles supporting the Intelligent Cloud (Microsoft Azure and Windows Server) business, as well as at Oracle, where he was a software developer. Varun has an MBA from the University of Michigan, and a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
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